Childish Voices
by QueenKalasin
Summary: She’d done it since she was very little, whenever she was alone. She would go find a nice little corner somewhere and make up elaborate pretends, talking aloud to the people that only existed to her.


_**Childish Voices**_

She knew it was childish.

But really, who was left to call her a baby for talking to her imaginary friends?

She'd done it since she was very little, whenever she was alone. Usually there were enough playmates about that she didn't have to resort to the ones in her mind, but sometimes her brothers would refuse to include her in their rough and tumble games. Sometimes her mother wouldn't let her go. Sometimes, she just got sick of so many loud brothers. So she would go find a nice little corner somewhere and make up elaborate pretends, talking aloud to the people that only existed to her.

Her favourite companion was a little boy with black hair, green eyes and a scar that slashed angrily across his forehead. His name was Harry and he was her knight in shinning armour. Ginny would imagine fearsome dragons and locked towers for him to defeat, and he'd conquer all she through at them. Then they'd have an elaborate wedding, before starting the game over.

Or sometimes, Ginny would just talk to the imagined boy, pouring out all the little secrets that accumulated over the course of a small girl's days. She shared her dreams and plans, and always knew that he would smile and encourage her no matter what.

As Ginny grew older, imaginary Harry drifted to the back of her mind, but whenever there was a problem, she talked it out with him before doing anything else. He remained her best, secret friend right up until the day her last brother left on the train to school without her.

How she had wanted to meet Harry for real that day!

But perhaps it was better she didn't, because as soon as she met the boy in real life, she started to feel embarrassed by her imagined ramblings with the person in her head. She stuffed the imaginary Harry into a dark corner of her mind the moment the real one came around, but she couldn't quite get over that embarrassment.

From then on, she tried to keep her Harry buried deep, but every once in a while she'd slip. It was just that she was so lonely during that long year without any brothers, and even lonelier in the year that followed. He'd come creeping out at night to exchange whispers with her, but she ignored him.

That was part of the reason that she fell so easily for Tom. He was her escape from the real life Harry she couldn't talk to and the imaginary one she couldn't stop talking to.

But all to soon even that comfort shattered, and Ginny vowed never to depend on childish voices she couldn't see again.

Ginny did very well, after that. She still couldn't look at the real Harry without thinking of her childhood companion, but she did make other friends. She had a life that kept getting better and better… until everything went dark for the world.

Still, even in the midst of war there is a bright spot. Harry woke up suddenly one day to realise that he liked Ginny quite a bit. And Ginny soon realised that being with the real Harry was even better than being with her imagined champion.

But it seems that the sweeter life is, the bigger the fall, and the more deadly.

Soon the happy bubble around Harry and Ginny was popped and the war intruded on their lives again, and swept them apart. Ginny found herself even more achingly lonely than before.

One summer night, after crying once again over Harry's disappearance and the danger he faced, Ginny weakened enough to let imaginary Harry creep back into her life.

And all those long months that he was gone, she talked to her constant companion. She took all the old dreams out of the closets in her mind and shook out the dust on them. Together, she and the Harry of her mind looked over them and added to them and patched the worn places with bright new imaginings.

And, so, she survived until the real Harry came back for her.

Ginny once again tucked away her faithful friend and embraced reality once more. She never spoke a word of her secret friend until one day, many years later, when she and Harry overheard their own daughter speaking to someone who wasn't there.

As the childish voice trustingly laid out all the dreams of a small girl to eager, non-existent ears, the mother's voice joined in and told the tale of an invisible sympathetic shadow. That day, Ginny finally bide a last farewell to the make-shift lover and pulled the real one closer.


End file.
